‘To Cause Sleepe Safe and Shure’: DangerousSubstances, Sleep Medicine and Poison Theories

in Early Modern England

Elizabeth K. Hunter *

Summary. Recipes found in letters and manuscript receipt books testify to the use of potentially

lethal substances in domestic sleep medicine. This article examines the theory behind the use of

poisons to induce sleep, contrasting Galenic theory with the radical approach of the Paracelsians.

According to Galenic medicine, the coldness of stupefactives such as henbane, deadly nightshade

and the opium poppy were useful in counteracting fever and helping a patient to sleep. However,

their coldness could also cause death. They were therefore used mainly in external medicine.

The exceptions were diacodium made from native poppies that were considered less lethal, and

sleeping draughts used in a surgical context. Laudanum, a new drug developed using alchemical

methods to separate medicine from poison, broke with traditional safety advice. On account of its

novelty, personal experience and recommendation were particularly important in establishing it

within the canon of sleeping drugs considered safe for use.

Keywords: sleep; laudanum; poison; recipes; Paracelsus

Browsing the papers of Elizabeth I’s chief adviser and treasurer William Cecil, Lord

Burghley, held in the British Library, the researcher comes across one that is striking in its

domesticity. This is a letter from Lord Talbot, sent by a messenger carrying a gift of a box

containing a substance Talbot’s wife has sent from her own store. Taken with a spoonful

of claret wine, this drug promises to ‘procure sleep’. Bearing witness to its efficacy,

Talbot writes that the ‘good effecte’ he has seen upon those who have taken it is such

‘as I never did see of any other thynge’. However, while he assures Burghley that he

would not recommend it if he did not ‘know it to be a moste safe medesine’, he advises

caution, suggesting that a trial should be made of the medicine by a third party before

the great man takes it himself.1

Drug safety was a significant problem in early modern sleep medicine that has not so

far received much attention in the secondary literature on the subject. The numerous rec-

ipes for sleeping aids that can be found in household collections from the time contain

Elizabeth Hunter is a Wellcome funded scholar at the Centre for the History of Emotions, Queen Mary, University

of London. She has published articles in The Seventeenth Century (2021), Reformation and Renaissance Review

(2013), and Etudes Episteme (2015), and has contributed to collections on the history of medicine and emotion.

Her most recent chapter appeared in James Kennaway and Rina Knoeff, eds, Lifestyle and Medicine in the

Enlightenment (2020). She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford.

*Elizabeth K. Hunter, Wellcome Humanities Research Fellow, The Centre for the History of Emotions, History

Office, ArtsTwo Building, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK.

E-mail: e.hunter@qmul.ac.uk

1Lord Talbot to Lord Burghley, March 30, 1558, No.

39, Lansdowne MS 57, British Library, London (hence-

forth BL).

© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creative-

commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, pro-

vided the original work is properly cited.

doi:10.1093/shm/hkab064

Advance Access published 23 October 2021

Social History of Medicine Vol. 35, No. 2 pp. 473–493

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hints that finding a means of inducing sleep2 that was both safe and effective was a cen-

tral concern. The instructions contained within these recipes can be linked to advice

around drug safety found in medical guides and printed herbals. The letter to Burghley,

however, contained a drug that was very different from the bulk of sleeping aids avail-

able at the time in that it did not follow the safety advice typically found in Hippocratic

medicine. Dated 1588, it provides a rare insight into the early use of laudanum—a nar-

cotic drug that first appeared in Europe in the sixteenth century. Before the tincture of

opium and alcohol invented by Thomas Sydenham in the next century became popular,

there were a variety of ways of preparing laudanum. That sent by Talbot was in solid

form, measured in grains. Its appearance as a sleep remedy from this period onwards

was the result of the impact of Paracelsian theories of poisoning, which challenged the

Galenic hegemony that had governed the principles of sleep medicine for centuries.

By examining early modern sleep recipes, and the context of early modern theories of

poisoning that informed them, this article seeks to demonstrate just how radical this new

drug was.

Historiography and SourcesThe importance of sleep in the history of health care is now well established in early mod-

ern scholarship. This began fifteen years ago with A. Roger Ekirch’s investigation into

the numerous factors that could interfere with rest in this period, such as chronic pain,

mental disturbance and environmental factors. More recently, Janine Riviere found 115

cases of patients suffering from sleep problems recorded in the notebooks of the physi-

cian Richard Napier and his associates.3 The work of Sasha Handley, Sandra Cavallo

and Tessa Storey has demonstrated that, as one of the six non-naturals essential for the

maintenance of health and prevention of disease, sleep was highly regarded in early

modern households, with a significant amount of time, energy and resources invested in

obtaining it.4 The work of Hannah Newton on convalescence has shown that sleep

was important in recuperation from illness. Sound, uninterrupted sleep was believed to

aid recovery, and acted as a sign of returning health.5

Part of the economy of sleep-management identified in this history are a wide variety

of medicaments that were intended to aid the onset of sound sleep. The main evidence

for this are manuscript household receipt collections, many of which contain recipes for

2Modern sleep research defines sleep as a spontaneous

and easily reversible state, which erects a perceptual

wall between the conscious mind of the sleeper and

the outside world: Matthew Wolf-Meyer, ‘The Nature

of Sleep’, Comparative Studies in Society and History,

2011, 53, 945–70, at 946–47. Early modern concepts

of sleep were broader than this, and included states

such as coma and lethargy: Margaret Simon and

Nancy Simpson-Younger, ‘Introduction: Forming

Sleep’, in Simon and Simpson-Younger, eds, Forming

Sleep: Representing Consciousness in the English

Renaissance (Pennsylvania Park, PA: Pennsylvania

State University Press, 2020), 5–6.3A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of

Nighttime (London: Phoenix, 2006), ch. 11; Janine

Riviere, Dreams in Early Modern England: Visions of

the Night (London: Routledge, 2017), 137–39.4Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, Healthy Living in

Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2014), ch. 4; Sasha Handley, Sleep in Early

Modern England (London: Yale University Press,

2016), ch. 2.5Hannah Newton, ‘“She Sleeps Well and Eats an Egg”:

Convalescent Care in Early Modern England’, in

Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, eds, Conserving

Health in Early Modern Culture: Bodies and

Environments in Italy and England (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2017), 104–32, at 111–

13.

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sleep.6 Handley’s most recent paper touches on the issue of the potential danger such

remedies posed, thrown into stark relief by an entry in a diary from 1599 recording the

death of a physician by the self-administration of a sleeping medicine.7 Generally, how-

ever, studies of early modern slumber do not identify poisoning as a major limiting factor

in attempts to medicate sleep. Nor do they situate the appearance of laudanum within

the context of innovative approaches to handling poisons.

In addressing this question of safety in sleep medicine, I aim to deepen our understand-

ing of early modern attitudes to dangerous medicines more generally. The question of

how to turn poisons into medicines, and how medicines can cause poisoning, is a contin-

uous theme in European history from ancient times to the present day, explored most re-

cently in an edited volume by Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalga.

The essays in this volume emphasise the importance of dose in determining whether a

drug is therapeutic or harmful—an idea that is often attributed to Paracelsus, but can

also be found in Galenic medicine.8 In sleep medicine, however, the most common

method of reducing the possibility of poisoning was the use of external applications, in

the form of compresses and aromatics, in order to avoid ingestion. It is in the context of

warnings in printed literature against using dangerous ingredients in internal medicine,

and the striking number of recipes recorded in manuscript receipt books that follow this

advice, that we can fully appreciate the novelty of laudanum, and the controversy sur-

rounding its development and use. The Paracelsian response to this controversy hinged

on the theory that a process of treatment to remove noxious elements from a raw sub-

stance was an essential step to ensuring that a medicine was safe. As Frederick W. Gibbs

argues in his 2018 monograph on poison treatises in the late medieval and early modern

period, Paracelsus was actually extremely critical of physicians and drug makers who be-

lieved the danger of a medicine could be mitigated by simply scaling down the quantity.9

Studying sleep recipes from household collections in the context of these developing

theories of poisoning can also provide further insight into the relationship between phi-

losophies of nature, practical knowledge, and the recording and exchange of recipes,

as discussed in the work of Pamela Smith, Elaine Leong, Alisha Rankin and others.10

6Sasha Handley, ‘Sleep-piety and Healthy Sleep in Early

Modern English Households’, in Ibid, 185–209, at

200–03.7Sasha Handley, ‘Accounting for Sleep Loss in Early

Modern England’, Interface Focus, 2020, 10 [https://

doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2019.0087], sect. 6, para. 5.

Tanya Pollard has drawn attention to the relationship

between sleeping draughts and poisons as a theme in

Shakespeare’s plays. She suggests that innovations in

alchemical medicine added to the fear and uncer-

tainty surrounding sleep medicine: Tanya Pollard, ‘“A

Thing Like Death”: Sleeping Potions and Poisons in

Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra’,

Renaissance Drama, 2003, 32, 95–121.8Andrew Cunningham, ‘Introduction: Deadly

Medicine’, and Helen King, ‘“First Behead Your

Viper”: Acquiring Knowledge in Galen’s Poison

Stories’, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and

Jon Arrizabalaga, eds, ‘It All Depends on the Dose’:

Poisons and Medicines in European History (e-book,

Routledge, 2018), ch. 2, paras. 3–9. For an older

study, which explores the subject from the standpoint

of modern toxicology, see John Timbrell, The Poison

Paradox: Chemicals as Friends and Foes (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2005).9Frederick W. Gibbs, Poison, Medicine, and Disease in

Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (e-book,

Routledge, 2018), ch. 6, subheading 3, paras. 4–9.10Elaine Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge:

Medicine, Science and the Household in Early

Modern England (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago

Press, 2018); Wendy Wall, Recipes for Thought:

Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern Kitchen

(Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press,

2016), esp. ch. 5; Alisha Rankin, Panaceia’s

Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern

Germany (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago

Press, 2013).

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The medical recipes in household collections cannot be read as an uncomplicated reflec-

tion of domestic practice. They were part of the tradition of collecting secrets, which had

its roots in ancient and medieval esoteric writings.11 Determining what kind of knowl-

edge secrets represent can be challenging. At one end of the spectrum are instructions

that codify practical knowledge and experience, at the other, are highly unlikely formulas

including impossible techniques or mythical ingredients. Recipes were often valued as a

form of social exchange, and for the sense they gave the reader and collector that nature

was accessible and malleable to the non-expert.12

Leong and Rankin have found that medical recipes were compiled primarily for the

purpose of trialling, and that trials could be ambitious and experimental in nature.13

As Elizabeth Spiller has written of receipt collections, ‘the domesticity they represent is

neither trivial nor safe’.14 Recipes do not confine themselves to minor ailments, but offer

treatments for deep, badly infected wounds and scalds, ulcers, gall stones and cancerous

swellings. They promise powerful cures that can save the patient from the violence

of surgery, and miraculous recovery where the physician has failed.15 Some noble and

gentlewomen acquired great skill and knowledge in pharmaceutical methods, and were

famous for their panaceas and poison antidotes.16

The sleep recipes analysed in this article are taken from collections owned by the gen-

try and nobility of England, dating from the early seventeenth to the early eighteenth

century. I discovered over 150 recipes relating to sleep in 52 manuscripts held at the

Wellcome Library, the British Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library.17 They range

from mild soporifics to strong sleeping draughts that would knock a patient out for

hours. There are four recipes to make laudanum using alchemical methods and equip-

ment. Some reflect the particular interests of their compilers. A collection by Jane

Jackson entitled ‘A very shorte and compendious Methode of Physicke and Chirurgery’

contains a number of methods for reviving a ‘sleeping’ (unconscious) patient, and a

powerful sleeping ‘drinke’ that was clearly intended to be used in a surgical context.

The Boyle family collection, probably compiled by Robert Boyle’s sister, contains two

11William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature:

Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern

Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1994).12Pamela H. Smith, ‘What is a Secret? Secrets and

Craft Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, in Alisha

Rankin and Elaine Leong, eds, Secrets and

Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800,

2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016), 47–68; Hannah

Bower, ‘The Problem with Practicality: Rethinking

Late Medieval English Medical Recipes, 1375-1500’

(DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2018).13See references at nt. 10.14Elizabeth Spiller, Seventeenth-Century English Recipe

Books: Cooking, Physic and Chircurgery in the Works

of Elizabeth Talbot Grey and Aletheia Talbot Howard

(London: Routledge, 2008), x.15Seth Stein LeJacq, ‘The Bounds of Domestic Healing:

Medical Recipes, Storytelling and Surgery in Early

Modern England’, Social History of Medicine, 2013,

26, 451–68.

16Alisha Rankin, ‘Gender, Poison, and Antidotes in

Early Modern Europe’, in Cunningham and Grell,

eds, It All Depends, ch. 8; Meredith K. Ray,

‘Prescriptions for Women: Alchemy, Medicine and

the Renaissance Querelle Des Femmes’, in Anke

Gilleir, Alicia Montoya and Suzan van Dijk, eds,

Women Writing Back/ Writing Women Back:

Transnational Perspectives from the Late Middle Ages

to the Dawn of the Modern Era (Leiden: Boston,

2010), 135–61; Elaine Leong, ‘Making Medicines in

the Early Modern Household’, Bulletin of the History

of Medicine, 2008, 82, 145–68.17Over 80 manuscript receipt books were consulted

during research for this article. Much of this was

made possible by the provision of online digital col-

lections by the Folger Shakespeare Library [https://

luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/] and the Wellcome

Library [https://wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digi

tal-collections/recipe-books/].

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different methods for making laudanum, reflecting the family’s interest in alchemical

experiments.18 A very small number of sleep recipes are based on principles of natural

magic.19 The bulk of the recipes are cures for sleeplessness, often in the context of sick-

ness, pain or fever, based on Galenic principles.

Probatum EstA preoccupation with safety can be inferred from the titles and ‘tag phrases’ used in

sleep recipes. One from Lady Ayscough’s collection involves placing warm bags of rue

and grated nutmeg on the temples. This would not seem particularly dangerous, and yet

the recipe ends with the assurance that ‘This is a safe meanes’.20 A recipe in Elizabeth

Okeover’s collection is entitled ‘To cause sleepe safe and shure’.21 One kept by the family

of Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, includes a recipe for a posset that was ‘safe

for a woman with childe or lyinge in’.22 An entry in a collection by the naturalist Sir Hugh

Plat, which involved taking four grains of laudanum, promised ‘To cause temperat sleep

wthout hurt’.23

In the case of opiates, there appears to have been a concern about the dangers of

overdose. Whereas most recipes are inexact about quantities and dosage, only some-

times giving measurements in spoons, opiates are quantified using minute units of mea-

surement. Recipes involving laudanum specify the dose to be taken in grains or drops

(depending on whether it was in solid or liquid form),24 in one instance differentiating

between children and adults.25 In a collection begun by Elizabeth Jacobs in the mid sev-

enteenth century, a recipe to procure sleep involves mixing half a grain of laudanum with

mithridate into a pill: ‘Take noe more without good Advice’, the author of the receipt

adds.26 One collection also contains an antidote in case of accidental overdose: ‘Cure for

on that as taken Laudnum: Lemon Juice taken Emeaditly with is an Emitic and prevents

the Lethargie appearance of Death and consequently preserves Life’.27

It is difficult to know on what basis these assurances of safety were made. Some re-

ceipt books contain notes or systems of markings in the margin to indicate which recipes

had been tried, and there are also examples of recipes that have been crossed out be-

cause the results were dissatisfying.28 None of the sleep recipes I have found, however,

18Alix Cooper, ‘Home and Households’, in Katharine

Park, ed, The Cambridge History of Science: vol. 3

Early Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006), 224–37, at 227.19These involve placing animal parts, plants or inscrip-

tions upon the breast of the patient: Thomas

Sheppey, ‘A Book of Choice Receipts . . . ca. 1675’,

v.a.452, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington

(henceforth FSL), 318; Jane Jackson, ‘A very shorte

and compendious Methode of Physicke and

Chirurgery, 1642’, MS 373, Wellcome Library,

London (henceforth WL), fo. 98r.20’The Lady Ayscough Booke Anno Domini 1692’, MS

1026, WL, 127.21Elizabeth Okeover & Others, c. 1675-1725, MS

3712, WL, fo. 101v.

22Philip Stanhope, ‘A Booke of Severall Receipts for

Severall Infirmities’, 2 vols, vol. 1, MS 761, WL, fo.

7r.23Sir Hugh Platt, ‘Collection of Medical Receipts’,

Sloane MS 2203, BL, fo. 62r.24’A Book of Phisick. Made June 1710’, MS 1320, WL,

107, 109; Boyle Family, c. 1675-1710, MS 1340, WL,

fo. 121v. A grain was the smallest English unit of

weight, equivalent to a corn of dried wheat: see en-

try for ‘grain, n1’ meaning 8 in the Oxford English

Dictionary Online [www.oed.com].25’My Lady Rennelaghs Choice Receipts’, MS Sloane

1367, BL, fo. 9v.26Elizabeth Jacobs & Others, 1654 – c. 1685, MS 3009,

WL, 57.27Anne Lovelace, ‘Recipes Medical and Culinary’, Add.

MS 34722, BL, fo. 41r.28Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, chs. 3–4.

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have such annotations or marks; but they do contain what have been termed ‘efficacy

phrases’, such as probatum est (‘it has been tried/tested’), ‘proved’, ‘approved’ or ‘ap-

proved a yoused’.29 There has been some debate over the significance of ‘efficacy

phrases’, which appear in English recipes from the medieval period onwards.30 Some

sleep recipes include the name or initials of the person who recommended it,31 but the

phrase alone was not necessarily indicative of first-hand experience. What they do

suggest is the empirical orientation of recipes, which were valued for their link with direct

experience. As Alisha Rankin puts it, the indication that ‘someone had tried them’

[original emphasis] was reassuring for those involved in the practice of making and using

medicines.32 The secondary literature on ‘efficacy phrases’ tends to focus on whether the

recipe was considered ‘good’ or effective; but the reassurance that a recipe had been

tried and/or was approved by a reliable person was also important in the process of

establishing whether it was safe to use, as will be explored towards the end of this article.

A connection between empirical testing and poisoning cannot, however, be ascertained

from tag and efficacy phrases alone, which are often left out of recipes incorporating

dangerous ingredients, but included in some mild recipes.

StupefactivesRecipes in manuscript collections are generally given without any comment on the medi-

cal theory behind them. However, comparing sleep recipes with advice concerning poi-

sons found in vernacular medical guides suggests that printed texts had a significant

influence on approaches to safety. In particular, herbals contain an abundance of infor-

mation on the uses and dangers of various ingredients. Through studying them, lay prac-

titioners acquired knowledge of a wide range of plants, their complexions, temperatures

and virtues. Popular examples were Nicholas Culpeper’s Astrologo-Physical Discourse of

the Herbs of this Nation, and works by William Turner and John Gerard.33

29Lady Frances Catchmay, ‘A Booke of Medicens’, c.

1625, MS 184A, WL, fo. 20r; English Receipt-Book:

16th Century, MS 634, WL, 138; Anon, ‘A Book of

Receipts Which Was Given Me By Several Men . . . ca.

1625-1700’, v.a.361-362, FSL, fo. 40r; FSL v.a.452

(Thomas Sheppey), 318–19.30The empirical basis of efficacy phrases is difficult to

establish, as ‘proved’ in the medieval period could

also refer to the method of scholastic proof

demanded in learned medical circles: Claire Jones,

‘Formula and Formulation: “Efficacy Phrases” in

Medieval English Medical Manuscripts’,

Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 1998, 99, 199–209;

Sara Pennell does not consider the phrase proabtum

est as sufficient in itself to indicate that a recipe had

been tried, as the phrase may have been copied from

a printed text: Sara Pennell, ‘Perfecting Practice?

Women, Manuscript Recipes and Knowledge in Early

Modern England’, in Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan

Gibson, eds, Early Modern Women’s Manuscript

Writing (London: Routledge, 2004), 237–58, at 255,

nt. 28. Rebecca Bushnell points out that books of

secrets often claimed that their fantastic cures had

been ‘proved’—claims which began to be doubted

as the new science of empiricism took hold: Rebecca

Bushnell, Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern

Gardens (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003),

177–81. Wendy Wall, while she acknowledges that

sometimes the phrase probatum est was applied to

cures that were highly unlikely, argues that it is coun-

ter-intuitive to dismiss it, given the abundance of

other evidence of testing within receipt books: Wall,

Recipes for Thought, 212–18, ch. 5 nt. 10. The most

significant recent contribution to the debate is that

of Elaine Leong, who has found evidence directly

linking the phrase to personal experience of either

the compiler or the donor: Leong, Recipes and

Everyday Knowledge, 84–86.31FSL v.a.361-362 (Anon, ‘A Book of Receipts’), fo.

40r; FSL v.a.452 (Thomas Sheppey), 319.32Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 39.33Elaine Leong, ‘“Herbals she Peruseth”: Reading

Medicine in Early Modern England’, Renaissance

Studies, 2014, 28, 556–78.

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The advice found in these texts was underpinned by ancient principles of Hippocratic

medicine. In the fifth century BC, a number of substances were classified as ‘refrigerants’,

which were believed to have a soporific or pain-relieving effect on the body. Refrigerants

worked by counteracting the heat that was causing pain or fever, and preventing sleep.

These were further divided into mild (mitigatives) and strong (stupefactives). Wild lettuce

was an example of an ingredient believed to be mildly sedative. In the early modern

period, it was very popular as a remedy for sleep loss, often mixed with ‘woman’s milk’

(human breast milk). Stupefactives, on the other hand, did not simply provide relief, but

had the power to numb parts of the body when applied locally, or to cause the whole

body to fall into a lethargy (a deep, unresponsive sleep) when ingested. While mitigatives

were considered safe, the use of stupefactives was often accompanied by dire warnings

of the danger of death, and the advice to only use them in greatest need.34

Stupefactives were not strictly poisons, but dangerous drugs. Frederick Gibbs has

shown how writers of poison treatises attempted to distinguish between venenum,

which was fundamentally harmful to the human body, and strong medicines, which

could harm the body through their qualities by introducing an excess of heat or cold.35

Commentators agreed that the coldness of stupefactives could be either therapeutic or

deadly, depending on how they were administered and in what quantities. There were

four plants in particular that were considered both potentially useful in sleep medicine,

but also poisonous if used incorrectly: these were deadly nightshade, henbane, man-

drake and the seeds or sap of the white (opium) poppy. While their deadly nature was

well known, these plants had a history of use in surgery and medicine for pain relief and

sedation stretching back to ancient times.36

Deadly nightshade, sometimes known by its Italian name bella donna, was much

feared because the berries were fatal if ingested. Its native name was ‘dwale’, from the

Scandinavian dvale meaning ‘stupor’. Herbalists warned against growing it in gardens

where it could be accidentally eaten by children and expectant mothers. If it was culti-

vated it should be in a separate patch, fenced off. Jon Gerard, in a chapter on ‘sleepy

nightshade’, described it as ‘a plant furious and deadly: for it bringeth such as have eaten

thereof into a dead sleepe wherein many have died, as hath been often seen and

34G. Kasten Tallmadge, ‘Some Anesthetics of

Antiquity’, Journal of the History of Medicine and

Allied Sciences, 1946, 1, 515–20. Faye Marie Getz,

Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle

English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of

Gilbertus Anglicus (London: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1991), 38–39. Gilbertus Anglicus was writing

in the context of cures for eye ache, which have

many similarities with cures for headache and sleep-

lessness: ‘Strong repercussives are called stupefac-

tives because they stupefy a part through their cold

and so they make it lose its ache and its feeling. And

because of their great violence, you shall not take

them in the ache of the eyes nor in any other ache

unless the ache is very violent and dangerous’. For

examples of lettuce mixed with breast milk see FSL

v.a.452 (Thomas Sheppey), 318–19. For an introduc-

tion to sleep in English medicine see Karl H.

Dannenfeldt, ‘Sleep: Theory and Practice in the Late

Renaissance’, The Journal of the History of Medicine

and the Allied Sciences, 1986, 41, 415–41.35Frederick W. Gibbs, ‘Specific Form and Poisonous

Properties: Understanding Poison in the Fifteenth

Century’, Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies

on the Preternatural, 2013, 2, 19–46, esp. 22–28.36Ioanna A. Ramoutsaki, Helen Askitopoulou, Eleni

Konsolaki, ‘Pain Relief and Sedation in Roman and

Byzantine Texts: Mandragoras Officinarum,

Hyoscyamos Niger and Atropa Belladona’,

International Congress Series: The History of

Anesthesia, 2002, 1242, 43–50; John Scarborough,

‘The Opium Poppy in Hellenistic and Roman

Medicine’, in Roy Porter, ed, Drugs and Narcotics in

History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1995), 4–23.

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prooved by experience both in England and else where’. However, its cooling properties

were useful in external medicine: ‘The leaves heereof laid unto the temples cause sleepe,

especially if they be imbibed or moistened in wine vineger. It easeth the intolerable paines

of the head-ach proceeding of heate in furious agues, causing rest being applied as

aforesaid.’37

Similarly Hyoscyamus, known as henbane in English, was believed to be of great help

in headaches and fevers when in contact with the skin. Herbals advised making it into a

plaster with woman’s milk, egg white and vinegar, or applying the oil to the temples to

provide relief. The leaves should never be ingested, although the Grete Herbal (1526)

suggested that the red and white seeds (never the black) were safe for ingestion in small

doses.38 According to the Flemish botanist Rembert Dodoens, the smell helped a patient

to sleep. One practice was to wash the feet with a concoction of the leaves seethed in

water.39

Among physicians and herbalists mandrake had a reputation for acting as a strong

narcotic even in the worst fevers, and could cause a sleep so deep that the patient would

not feel the surgeon’s knife. The thirteenth-century text On the Properties of Things,

an English edition of which was published in the late sixteenth century, advised that

mandrake mixed with woman’s milk and applied to the temples ‘maketh to sleepe, yea,

though it were in the most hot ague’. It could be ingested if necessary, but the writer ad-

vised great caution as an overdose would be fatal.40

The advice around these herbs was therefore very similar: they could be poisonous if

ingested, and therefore should only be taken internally in the greatest need (in the case

of mandrake and henbane), or not at all (in the case of nightshade); but they were safe

to use in topical applications, having a therapeutic effect through smell or skin contact.

This was because in Galenic medicine it was believed that the cooling powers of herbs

would be absorbed by the body through the pores of the skin, helping to rebalance the

humours. Poultices bound to the head would therefore affect the temperature of the

brain, inducing sleep. Aromatics were important in this process, as smell was believed to

be a vapour drawn directly into the brain through the nose.41

Recipes involving stupefactives in printed and manuscript sources were more likely to

specify that they were intended for a patient who was sick, rather than simply having

trouble sleeping at night. An example of how deadly nightshade was used in this context

can be found in the diary of the merchant and astrologer Samuel Jeake. On a night when

he was suffering from a fever, which kept him from sleep, he found relief by laying the

leaves of the plant on his temples and forehead.42 There are also numerous examples in

receipt books that suggest that external application was a popular way of exploiting the

37John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of

Plantes (London, 1633), 340–41; Rembert Dodoens,

A Newe Herbal, or Historie of Plantes, trans. Henry

Lyte (London, 1578), 447.38Anon, The Grete Herball which Geveth Parfyt

Knowledge and Understanding of All Maner of

Herbes (London, 1526), sig. N(v); Nicholas Culpeper,

The English Physitian Enlarged . . . Being An

Astrologo-physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of

this Nation (London, 1653), 124–25.

39Dodoens, A Newe Herbal, 450.40Stephen Batman, Batman Upon Bartholome His

Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum, trans. John Trevisa

(London, 1582), fo. 304r-v.41C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England

(London: Yale University Press, 2006), 58, 126.42Michael Hunter and Annabel Gregory, eds, An

Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century:

Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652-1699 (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1988), 140.

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narcotic benefits of poisonous plants, while avoiding the danger associated with inges-

tion. Take, for instance, the following recipe using the ‘cooling’ properties of nightshade,

houseleek and lettuce, found in Lady Ayscough’s receipt book:

For heat of the stomack burneing up to the head and hindering sleep

Nightshade, sengreen [houseleek], & lettice, stamp them together, then putt itt

into vessels till itt be cold then anoint ye temples very well with itt & soake a paire

of Linnen cloath in the liquor & bind itt to the temples & forehead and itt will expell

the heat of the stomack and cause rest.43

Another example is a receipt from a collection begun by Anne Brumwich in the early sev-

enteenth century, entitled ‘A Medicine to pcure sleepe’. The instructions are to add a

spoonful each of lettuce, henbane, white poppy, nightshade and oil of roses to a larger

amount of rose water, breast milk and wine vinegar, which is then heated and absorbed

into a rose cake, before being wrapped in a cloth with some grated nutmeg and laid

warm over the patient’s forehead. This recipe does not mention fever, but the instruction

to ‘let it lye foure and twenty houres’ suggests that this was a remedy intended for those

ill enough to have taken to their beds.44 To relieve fever and help ‘weak’ patients to

sleep, mandrake, henbane and nightshade, sometimes soaked in vinegar, were applied

to the temples, either directly to the skin or in linen cloths or quilted bags; they were also

made into pomanders for the patient to smell.45

White Poppy and DiacodiumWhereas henbane, nightshade and mandrake were considered safe to use in general

sleep medicine only when applied externally, white poppy was treated in a more versatile

fashion. The plant papaver somniferum (‘sleep-inducing poppy’) was known in English

texts as ‘white poppy’, to distinguish it from the red field poppy (papaver rhæas), but its

colour is closer to pale purple. Dodoens described it as ‘betwixt white and red, changing

towarde blacke, having black spottes’.46 Manuscript and printed texts show evidence of

the home-grown white poppy in use in medicine, and also the use of opium, which was

the dried sap of opium poppies cultivated in hot countries and imported. The imported

opium was regarded as more powerful than products made from native poppies, but

both were considered to be narcotics. In Medicaments for the Poor, translated by

Nicholas Culpeper, the author explained that the seeds of white poppy were milder and

could be safely eaten, but opium had a similar narcotic strength to mandrake and

henbane.47

43WL MS 1026 (Lady Ayscough), 189–90.44’Mrs Anne Brumwich Her Booke of Receipts or

Medicines ffor Severall Sores and other Infermitie’, c.

1625–1700, MS 160, WL, 54. On the concepts of a

‘weak’ patient and taking to bed see Hannah

Newton, Misery to Mirth: Recovery from Illness in

Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2018), 68–71, at 195–98.45Anthony Lewis, ‘Receipts in Cookery, Confectionery,

Gardening, Medicine’, owned by the Lady Marquess

Dorset, ca. 1606/7, MS Sloane 556, BL, fo. 39r;

Pharmaceutical and Cookery Recipes, ca. 1675,

v.a.21, FSL, 18, 55; FSL v.a.452 (Thomas Sheppey),

318; Arthur Corbett, Collection of Medical Receipts,

Middle 17th Century, MS 212, WL, fo. 84r; WL MS

373 (Jane Jackson), fo. 37r; Receipt Book, Early 17th

Century, MS 8086, WL, 151.46Dodoens, A Newe Herbal, 432.47Jean Prevost, Medicaments for the Poor, trans.

Nicholas Culpeper (London, 1656), 263–64.

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Whereas opium was seen as dangerous, white poppy can be found used in a similar

way to a mild sedative such as lettuce. Banckes’s herbal describes the theory and use of

poppy in sleep medicine: ‘The whyte Popy is colde and moyste and it is good to cause

one to slepe . . . to provoke a slepe make a playster of [the seeds] with womans mylke

and the whyte of an egge & lay it to ye temples’.48 Dodoens suggested that a decoction

of the leaves and heads would bring about sleep when it was drunk, or used to bathe

the head and hands.49

White poppy, alongside lettuce, is one of the most popular ingredients in sleep recipes

in manuscript receipt books. The seeds were added to posset ale or wine, drunk mixed

with almond milk and lettuce juice, and used in warm compresses applied to the tem-

ples.50 Jane Jackson’s collection contains a recipe very similar to the one suggested in

Banckes’s herbal:

Another to cause a man to sleep

Take white poppie and hengle seede and the white of an egge and womans milke

medle all together/ and lay to his head and it shall make him soon to sleepe and

helpe him./.51

A popular way of using white poppy in sleep medicine during this period was in the form

of diacodium, a syrup made from the heads ground with sugar. An early reference to

diacodium can be found in William Bullein’s Dialogue Against the Fever Pestilence (1564),

in which he advises ‘Drinke your Diacodion at night, to reconcile slepe again’.52

Diacodium could be bought from the apothecary, but manuscript receipt books com-

monly contain recipes for diacodium or similar poppy syrups.53 One of the reasons for

this may have been to ensure quality. In 1747, H. Pemberton wrote in his commentary

upon the London Dispensatory that diacodium was ‘a medicine of such importance, that

it ought to be made, as near as possible always to one and the same standard’.54

However, the household was sometimes seen as a better place for quality-control than

the apothecary’s shop. Martha Bradley, in her mid-eighteenth-century popular household

guide The British Housewife, advised families to make diacodium at home, as the apothe-

cary often used coarse sugar or burned the syrup.55

Evidence from receipt books shows diacodium was taken on its own,56 or used as an

additive to strengthen a recipe based on mitigatives. An example is this recipe from the

early seventeenth century: ‘Take of white Lettice seede one ounze, and beate it in a

48Anon, Here Begynnyth a New Mater, the Whiche

Sheweth and Treateth of ye Vertues [and] Proprytes

of Herbes (London: Rycharde Banckes [printer],

1525), sig. Gii(r).49Dodoens, A Newe Herbal, 432.50See for example Book of Receipts, A, c. 1650–1739,

MS 144, WL, fo. 53r; WL MS 373 (Jane Jackson), fo.

47r; WL MS 1026 (Lady Ayscough), 241; WL MS

8086 (Receipt Book), 152; Mrs Corlyon, ‘A Booke of

Such Medicines As Have Been Approved . . . ca.

1606’, v.a.388, FSL, 18-19; Cookbook of Constance

Hall, 1672, v.a.20, FSL, fo. 18r; Medical Recipes,

Compiled ca. 1625, x.d.469, FSL, 23.51WL MS 373 (Jane Jackson), fo. 91v.

52William Bullein, A Dialogue Both Pleasant and Piety-

full, Against the Fever Pestilence (London, 1564), fo.

37v.53Cookery and Medical Receipts by Margaret Barker,

1672, MS Sloane 2485, BL, fo. 14v; Katherine

Brown, Medicinal and Cookery Recipes, ca. 1650-

1662, v.a.397, FSL, fo. 44r.54The Dispensatory of the Royal College of Physicians,

London, trans. and comment. H. Pemberton (Dublin,

1747), 218–19.55Martha Bradley, The British Housewife; Or, the Cook,

Housekeeper and Gardiner’s Companion (London,

[1770?]), 384–85.56WL MS 1320 (Book of Phisick), 107.

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morter, with a quantity of good white Sugar, until it do come to a moist Conserve, and if

you can gett it putt thereto halfe a spoonefull of Diacodyum’. In other recipes it was

added to juleps and taken in, or with, possets.57 Recipe titles suggest that it was used in

cases where a chronic or severe condition was preventing sleep. In Philip Stanhope’s col-

lection, there is a recipe for a sleeping cordial intended for someone suffering from ‘ex-

tremity of paine of the Goute’. This is a mixture of diacodium and cowslip syrup with

other syrups and waters. The instructions are to take ‘two drachmes .. at the howre of

sleepe’.58 A similar ‘lulling cordial’ combining diacodium with cowslip syrup, intended for

women in the ‘lying in’ period after childbirth, can be found in a collection of recipes

spanning the period 1688 to 1727, begun by a Mrs Meade. This is another occasion in

which pain would likely have interfered with rest.59

Culpeper’s Physical Directory contained a discussion of which poppy-based medicines

posed the greatest threat to the patient. Imported opium derived from poppies grown in

hot countries was the coldest (and therefore the most potent). Syrup made from native

white poppies was not as strong, but should still be used with caution—‘though they be

no edge-tools, yet tis ill jesting with them’. It should not be given at the beginning of a fe-

ver, for instance. However, syrup made from red poppies was safe and effective to be

used when the patient was suffering from fever or frenzy. This last claim was disputed:

‘Some are of opinion that these Poppies are the coldest of all other: beleeve them that

list: I know no danger in this syrup, so it be taken with moderation ... and may safely be

given in Frenzies, feavers and hot agues’.60 Most English sleep recipes called for white

poppies, but red poppies were also supposed to be sleep inducing. Under an entry on

‘Corne Roses, or wild Popyes’ in the Freke family papers is written: ‘The Faculty of the

wyld popye is like thatt of the other [white poppy] viz. to procure sleep’.61 The title of a

recipe for a syrup made from red field poppies from the mid seventeenth century—‘a sir-

rup of Poppies to procure Sleep safely’—suggests that Culpeper’s belief in the mildness

of this soporific was shared by others.62

OpiumEnglish poppies, therefore, were thought of as a relatively safe staple ingredient of sleep

medicine; but what of the more potent sap that came from the heads of foreign pop-

pies? Opium had been used as a sedative and pain-killer in topical applications, com-

presses, inhalations and internal medicines since the late medieval period. Medieval

physicians advised that it should only be used in cases of persistent insomnia or unbear-

able pain.63 While opium, in the form of laudanum, was to become central to pain relief

and sedation in later centuries, in sixteenth-century printed herbals it was treated much

like henbane or mandrake; its usefulness as a narcotic was attributed to its coldness, and

57FSL v.a.388 (Mrs Corlyon), 18–19; John and Joan

Gibson, Medical Recipe Book, 1632–1717, MS 311,

WL, 30; ’Johanna Saint John Her Booke, 1680’, MS

4338, WL, fo. 138r; English Medical Notebook, 17th

Century, MS 6812, WL, fo. 41r.58WL MS 762 (Philip Stanhope, vol. 2), fo. 293r.59WL MS 3500 (Mrs Meade & others), fo. 30v.60Nicholas Culpeper, A Physicall Directory, or, A

Translation of the London Dispensatory Made by the

Colledge of Physicians in London (London, 1649),

112–13, 131.61Freke Papers, vol. I, Commonplace Book of Elizabeth

Freke, Add. MS 45718, BL, 275.62English Recipe Book, Seventeenth Century, MS

7391, WL, 7.63Luke DeMaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of

Healing, from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara, CA:

Praeger, 2013), 125.

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it was assumed that it worked in much the same way as any other stupefactive—through

application to the skin, smell and (only in very small amounts) taken internally.

Consistently, the advice was to apply it outwardly, and only when necessary. Take, for

example, the section on opium in the Grete Herbal. Opium is described as cold in the

fourth degree, and instructions are given ‘To cause a seke persone to slepe: Medle opium

in womans mylke and put powdre of mandragora therto . . .[or] confyet opium with juce

of an herbe called knotgrasse or corrigiole or with juce of henbane and make a playster

therto’.64

Even applied externally, the advice was to use caution. Dodoens’ herbal contains warn-

ings about the dangers of opium:

The use of Poppie is very evill and dangerous, and especially Opium, the which

taken excessively, or to often applied upon the flesh outwardly, or otherwise with-

out good consideration and advisement, it wyll cause a man to sleepe to muche, as

though he had the Lethargie, which is the forgetful sicknesse, and bringeth foolish

doting fansies, it corrupteth the sense and understanding, bringeth the Palsie, and

in fine it killeth the body.65

Thomas Lupton’s book of secrets A Thousand Notable Things included a ‘marvellous wa-

ter to provoke sleepe’ made from ground opium and garlic heads, used to anoint the

temples and wrists: ‘And beware you minister nor use this, but uppon a great necessity,’

he added, ‘as in franticke persons’.66

The Swiss physician Theophile Bonet, whose A Guide to the Practical Physician

Shewing . . . the Truest and Safest Way of Curing All Diseases was published in English to-

wards the end of the seventeenth century, was of the opinion that the use of raw opium

in topical applications was at best ineffective—at worst, it would overheat the brain. If

this guide is typical, the advice to physicians in the seventeenth century was that opium

in its pure form should very rarely be given, considering that diacodium and laudanum

provided safer alternatives.67 This may explain why opium in its raw form is very rarely

found as an ingredient in sleep recipes from seventeenth-century manuscript receipt

books. I have only found one recipe that uses the traditional method. This is in an early

seventeenth-century collection of recipes written by Anthony Lewis, owned by the

Marquess of Dorset. The receipt is to help a weak patient to sleep: ‘take gume called

Opaim the bignesse of a Pease [similar to a chickpea] & dissolve it in two spoone full of

womans milke, or for want of it Rosewater, make it bloud-warme, & anoynt ye tem-

ples’.68 An anonymous collection from later in the century suggests swallowing a small

amount of a combination of opium and henbane gum rolled in treacle (presumably to

64Anon, The Grete Herball, sig. S(v) – Si(r). For other

examples of opium used externally, see Humphrey

Llwyd (trans. and exp.), The Treasury of Healthe

(London, 1553), sig. C.iii(v) – C.iv(v); Philip Barrough,

The Method of Phisick: Containing the Causes,

Signes and Cures of Inward Diseases (London, 1583),

[8]; William Langham, The Garden of Health

Conteyning the Sundry Rare and Hidden Vertues and

Properties of all Kindes of Simples and Plants

(London, 1597), 454; Ralph Williams, Physical Rarities

Containing the Most Choice Receipts of Physick and

Chyrurgerie (London, 1652), 136.65Dodoens, A Newe Herbal, 433.66Thomas Lupton, A Thousand Notable Things, of

Sundry Sortes (London, 1579), 109.67Theophile Bonet, A Guide to the Practical Physician

Shewing . . . the Truest and Safest Way of Curing All

Diseases, trans. anon (London, 1686), 751–52.68BL Sloane 556 (Anthony Lewis), fo. 39r.

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take away the bitter taste) to help the patient to sleep. The advice to ingest these strong

substances, even in a small amount, is unusual. As there are no markings around the re-

ceipt there is no way of knowing whether this recipe was actually tried.69

It ‘Mortyfyeth All the Wyttes’Printed advice literature and handwritten recipes, therefore, both point to a culture of

caution surrounding the use of poisons for the purposes of helping a weak or feverish pa-

tient to sleep. However, these same ingredients—mandrake, henbane, nightshade and

opium—were treated differently when the purpose was to create a deep state of uncon-

sciousness, rather than to help the body fall into a natural sleep. Mandrake, in particular,

was believed to be useful in surgery because a patient under its effects lost all sense of

pain. William Turner advised that if mandrake juice was either smelled or ingested the pa-

tient ‘shall fall into a forgetfull and slepishe drowsines’. However, there were dangers

and side-effects. The surgeon Ambroise Pare wrote: ‘Mandrag taken in great quantity, ei-

ther the root or fruit causeth great sleepines, sadness, resolution [dispersal or dissolution

of the homours], and languishing of the body, so that after many scritches and gripings,

the patient falls asleep in the same posture as he was in, just as if he were in a

Lethargie.’70

As mandrake could kill, there was debate over whether ingestion was safe. John

Pechey, on observing that the smell of the pulp and seeds was not noxious, concluded

that that part of the plant was relatively innocuous.71 Turner advised that up to an ounce

and a half of wine with mandrake juice mixed in could be given in preparation for sur-

gery, or in cases where the patient was in great pain and having difficulty sleeping.

However, as an overdose could be fatal, Turner devoted a large part of his discussion of

the virtues of mandrake to instructions on ways to revive a patient when there were signs

of poisoning. These included making the patient smell pepper or mustard, and applying

vinegar and rose oil to the temples.72

Printed sources stressed the potency of stupefactives and the powerful effects of minis-

cule amounts. The Grete Herbal informed the reader that a single grain of opium taken

in the body ‘astonyeth and mortyfyeth all the wyttes of man in suche maner that

he feleth no payne & causeth hym to slepe’. William Langham gave the dose to cause

unconsciousness as the size of a single corn of wheat: ‘To sleepe while ye surgian do his

office’ the patient should drink half a dram of opium mixed into a pound of wine.73

An alternative, that would avoid ingestion, was to create a powerful inhalant. The Italian

surgeon Giovanni da Vigo, whose works were published in English in 1543, recorded

that some gave the patient a sponge containing opium to smell, in order to render the

69FSL v.a.21 (Pharmaceutical and Cookery), 7.70William Turner, The First and Seconde Partes of the

Herbal of William Turner Doctor of Phisick (Cologne,

1568), 47; Ambroise Pare, The Works of that Famous

Chirurgion Ambrose Parey, trans. Thomas Johnson

(London, 1665), 518. See also Pierre Boaistuau,

Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature Containing a

Description of Sundry Strange Things, trans. E.

Fenton (London, 1569), 73; Batman, Batman Upon

Bartholome, fo. 304r-v.71John Pechey, The Compleat Herbal of Physical Plants

(London, 1694), 297.72Turner, Herbal of William Turner, 47.73Anon, The Grete Herball, sig. S(v) – S.i(r); Langham,

The Garden of Health, 454.

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patient unconscious before amputation—‘They enterpryse a daungerouse busyness’, he

added.74 The Treasury of Health (1553) suggested soaking a sponge in the juice of

opium, henbane, poppy, mandrake, mulberries, hemlock and lettuce, and holding this to

the patient’s nose. This would cause the patient to sleep until he was revived using a

sponge soaked in vinegar.75

Evidence of the use of stupefactives in this way in English domestic medicine is scarce.

However, sleeping potions did form part of the secrets tradition with which household

practitioners were experimenting in medieval and early modern Europe. Meredith Ray

has found an opium-based surgical drink in a book of ‘experiments’ compiled by the

Italian noblewoman Caterina Sforza in the late fifteenth century.76 In seventeenth-cen-

tury English manuscripts, there are a small number of examples of drinks intended to stu-

pefy the patient, which were used either in preparation for surgery or to incapacitate a

person who had become frantic. Here, the printed and the manuscript sources diverge.

While mandrake as an ingredient in sleeping potions appears in famous English plays,

such as The Jew of Malta, it was not easily obtainable in England, and does not feature in

these recipes.77

The basis of the drugs found in English receipt books is animal gall mixed with alco-

hol.78 A very small number of these also contain poisonous plants. One recipe in Jane

Jackson’s collection, with the unsettling title ‘to make a drinke to cause a man to sleepe

till hee bee ript’, involved mixing pig’s gall with the juice of hemlock, henbane, wild neep

(bryony), lettuce, opium poppy and eysel (wine vinegar). This was then added to a little

wine and drunk by the patient, who should be seated near a fire. The recipe promised

that, once sleep occurred, ‘then mayst thou surely carve him’. When the operation was

completed, the patient was revived by washing his temples and the wound with salt and

vinegar.79

This recipe is recognisable as dwale, a narcotic drink80 found in English remedy books

widely circulated from the late fourteenth century. It can also be found in Lupton’s A

Thousand Notable Things, and in the physician and surgeon Thomas Bonham’s collection

of recipes for use in surgical practice, published in 1630. Both sources refer to the age of

74Giovanni da Vigo, The Most Excellent Workes of

Chirurgerye, trans. Bartholomew Traheron (London,

1543), sig. C.lix(v).75Llwyd, Treasury of Healthe, sig. C.iii(v) – C.iv(v).76Meredith K. Ray, ‘Experiments with Alchemy:

Caterina Sforza in Early Modern Scientific Culture’, in

Kathleen P. Long, ed, Gender and Scientific

Discourse in Early Modern Culture (Farnham:

Ashgate, 2010), 139–64, at 155.77Pollard, ‘“A Thing Like Death” ’, 104. The anaesthe-

tist Anthony J. Carter has hypothesised that the wild

neep (bryony) included in recipes for dwale (see be-

low) had been substituted at some point for man-

drake: Carter, ‘Dwale: An Anaesthetic from Old

England’, British Medical Journal, 1999, 319, 1623–

1626, 1624.78WL MS 4338 (Johanna Saint John), fo. 56v; WL MS

8086 (Receipt Book), 113; Medical and Cookery

Receipts, 1672-1680, MS Egerton 2214, BL, 59.

79WL 373 (Jane Jackson), fo. 99r.80The Middle English word dwale means ‘a dazed or

unconscious state’. These types of sleeping draughts

are sometimes referred to by historians as anaes-

thetics because the aim was to render the patient un-

conscious of pain. However, the state induced may

not have met the standard of the modern definition

of anaesthesia, in which there should be a complete

absence of pain. In the terminology of the time

dwale was classified as a stupefactive because it

dulled the patient’s senses. See Linda E. Voigts and

Robert P. Hudson, ‘A Drynke p at Men Callen Dwale

to Make a Man to Slepe Whyle Men Keerven Hem: A

Surgical Anesthetic from Late Medieval England’, in

Sheila Campbell and David Klausner, eds, Health,

Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture (London:

Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 34–56, at 36 and nt. 7.

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the recipe as a basis for its authority. Lupton gives further insight into practices surround-

ing safe administration of the drug: ‘Use it warely and prove it advisedly: if you begyn

with a lytle quantitie you maye increase it when you wyll: but if you geve too much at

once, you can not diminish it when you lyst’.81

Linda Voigts and Robert Hudson, in their essay on dwale in the medieval period, note

that this was a peculiarly English recipe. Firstly, it did not include mandrake, secondly,

continental texts on surgery tended to prefer the soporific sponge described in da Vigo’s

treatise. While many of the ingredients can be explained in terms of Galenic humoral the-

ory, Voigts and Hudson came to the conclusion that the recipe was arrived at empirically,

rather than copied between manuscripts, and represents actual medical practice in medie-

val England. However, ancient and medieval theories about the safe use of stupefactives

can clearly be seen influencing the ingredients and instructions written into the recipe. It

was thought that henbane and white poppy were more safely used in combination than

separately, and that vinegar was a powerful antidote to narcotic poisons. Keeping the pa-

tient near the fire was another preventative measure against the danger of death, the heat

from the fire counteracting the cold effects of the drug upon the humours.82 The recipe,

therefore, represents both experiential knowledge, in terms of expertise acquired through

surgical practice and familiarity with native English plants, and theoretical knowledge, in

terms of a Galenic framework for approaching poisons. It was this theoretical framework,

which advocated mixing poisonous ingredients, untreated, with ingredients thought to

counteract the poison, that was vigorously rejected by Paracelsus and his followers.

Preparing LaudanumCasting Hippocratic medicine as unclean, malignant and deadly, Paracelsus and his fol-

lowers portrayed chymical medicines as powerful and pleasant—an attractive alternative to

the violent and ineffective methods of trying to balance the humours through blood-letting,

purges and mixing poisons with ‘corrective’ ingredients.83 A recent paper by Georgina

Hedesan has greatly expanded our understanding of Paracelsus’ theory of poisons. He

regarded any poison that had not been alchemically treated as harmful to the body, even in

small doses, and was highly critical of how dangerous ingredients were added, untreated,

to remedies in traditional medicine. Potentially deadly substances, however, could form

the basis of powerful remedies because every substance contained within it both toxin and

cure (or arcana). The aim of alchemical medicine was to extract the arcana by separating

the substance into its constituent parts of salt, mercury and sulphur. The vapours of mercury

or sulphur were poisonous, but the salt was generally good for health.84

81Thomas Bonham, The Chyrugians Closet: or, An

Anitdotarie Chyrurgicall Furnished with Varietie and

Choyce (London, 1630), 244–45; Lupton, A

Thousand Notable Things, 79. For an example of a

similar sleeping draught in a fifteenth-century receipt

book see Warren R. Dawson, ed, A Leechbook or

Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth

Century, 2nd edn (Kessinger, 2004), 262. Gwen

Seabourne has found evidence of the use (or misuse)

of this drug, or something similar, in England as early

as the late thirteenth century: Gwen Seabourne,

‘Drugs, Deceit and Damage in Thirteenth-century

Herefordshire: New Perspectives on Medieval

Surgery, Sex and the Law’, Social History of

Medicine, 2016, 30, 255–76, at 258–62.82Voigts and Hudson, ‘A Drynke p at Men Callen

Dwale’, 35, 40–41, 43–44.83Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in Early

Modern English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 8.84Georgina D. Hedesan, ‘Alchemy, Potency, Imagination:

Paracelsus’s Theories of Poison’, in Grell and

Cunningham, eds, It All Depends, 81–102, at 91–94;

see also W. B. Deichmann, D. Henschler, B. Holmstedt

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The Paracelsian tradition placed a high value on sedative medicine, emphasising the

central role of sleep in the restoration of health: ‘Sleep is the Arcanum in medicine,’

wrote the sixteenth-century alchemist Oswald Croll, ‘far more worth than gemms or

precious stones’.85 Laudanum was developed through attempts to produce a narcotic

more powerful and effective than traditional remedies by following Paracelsus’ radical

new theory of how to turn poisons into medicines. Some very early recipes for laudanum

did not contain opium, but did contain henbane gum.86 It may have been the case that,

at this stage (late sixteenth century), opium was regarded as being interchangeable with

henbane because both were stupefactives. This would suggest that it was the application

of the processes of alchemical transformation to the traditional ingredients of sleep medi-

cine, rather than the presence of opium, that was thought of as laudanum’s essential

characteristic. The drug sent to Lord Burghley may not have been opium-based.

Laudanum promised a new thing: a powerful internal medicine that could be used in

cases where fever and pain were interfering with rest. However, this challenged the cen-

turies-old belief that potent medicines should only be ingested in ‘desperate diseases’. In

1618, the astrologer and medical practitioner Thomas Bretnor published a translation of

a French work on how to prepare laudanum ‘for the comfort and ease of all such persons

as are inwardly afflicted with any extreme griefe, or languishing paine, especially such as

deprive the body of all natural rest’. In a preface to the reader, he explained that his pri-

mary motivation for publishing the pamphlet was that both physicians and lay people

had serious reservations about the safety of laudanum:

not onely the rude multitude and men of some judgement through vaine delusion

and superstitious feare, but many Physitions themselves through a Galenicall

perswasion, make no small question and scruple whether Opium may bee taken

inwardly or not; Nay, I have knowen men of good discretion so farre infatuated by

conceipt and heare say as they have rather chosen to indure intollerable paines

then they would take three poore graines of well prepared Laudanum

Bretnor believed that distrust in laudanum was fostered by wide-spread ignorance con-

cerning alchemical processes: ‘I cannot greatly blame them,’ he continued, ‘for the naked

truth is, many modern Physitions know not well what to make of it . . . I onely wish you

and G. Keil, ‘What is there that is not Poison? A Study

of the Third Defense by Paracelsus’, Archives of

Toxicology, 1986, 58, 207–13.85Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica, & Praxis

Chymiatricae, or Royal and Practical Chemistry in

Three Treatises, trans. anon (London, 1670), 86.

Similar sentiments can be found in Giambattista della

Porta, Natural Magick . . . Wherein Are Set Forth All

the Riches and Delights of the Natural Sciences,

trans. anon (London, 1658), 217; and Angelus Sala,

Opiologia: or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature,

Properties, True Preparation and Safe Use and

Administration of Opium, trans. Thomas Bretnor

(London, 1618), 29. The arcanum was a marvellous

medicine or elixir that cured all diseases.86See, for instance, the recipe for ‘Laudanum

Anodinum’, which contains wine, henbane gum,

unicorn horn, amber and potable gold, in Paracelsus,

A Hundred and Fouretene Experiments and Cures,

trans. John Hester (London, 1596), 20–21. While the

invention of laudanum is attributed to Paracelsus, his

version was unlikely to have borne much resem-

blance to later versions, and probably did not contain

opium. His followers often used his name to promote

their own remedies: Henry E. Sigerist, ‘Laudanum in

the Works of Paracelsus’, Bulletin of the History of

Medicine, 1941, 9, 530–44.

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to have great regard to its preparation: for as in most Physicall Drugges there remaineth

some bad qualitie or other which needeth correction’.87

The refining process by which the arcana was extracted was known amongst alchem-

ists as the art of spagyria.88 Bretnor’s pamphlet, originally written by the alchemical

physician Angelus Sala, discussed the properties of raw opium and explained how the

spagyrist turned it into laudanum. Some physicians, from the Paracelsian tradition and

more broadly, questioned whether opium had been correctly classified as cold in com-

plexion, and therefore whether its observed narcotic and deadly effects could be

explained using the traditional Galenic framework.89 However, when it came to views of

poisoning, the question was not of primary importance because Paracelsians attributed

the lethal potential of opium to the sulphur contained within the raw product.

After outlining the various ailments for which opium could be used externally, and the

various arguments over the safety of ingestion, Sala wrote ‘it is not my counsel that any

Physition should use it crude in this maner, seeing we have Art and meanes to prepare it

otherwise’. He went on to describe the various means of removing the noxious sulphur,

which included infusion with aromatics or the juice of quinces, baking, heating in a frying

pan to evaporate off the sulphur, and dissolving in liquor; the quintessence (pure essence)

of opium was then extracted by mixing with the juice of quinces, vinegar or liquor.90

There are a number of examples of laudanum in use as a sleep remedy recorded in

manuscript receipt books.91 However, throughout the seventeenth century, concerns

were raised that many physicians continued to be ignorant of the proper way of making

and administering it. Thomas Willis wrote, disparagingly, of the many novel medicines

that had come into use under the name of Laudanum or Nepenthes: ‘among our

Countrymen there is not only a company but a swarm rather of false Chymists and

Quacksalvers; every one of which boasts of his peculiar Laudanum, which they rashly

give in every Disease and Condition’.92

This may be why laudanum does not appear so commonly in sleep recipes as diaco-

dium, which was often seen by health-care advisers as a safer substitute. Bradley claimed

that her recipe for home-made diacodium was ‘much safer and better than

Laudanum’.93 Gideon Harvey considered diacodium to be an opiate, with similar effects

87Sala, Opiologia, sig. A4(r) – A5(v), B(v).88On spagyria and its importance in medicine see

Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert

Boyle and His Alchemical Quest (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1998), 9, 186–88.89The traditional argument for classifying opium as

cold in the fourth degree was its observable effects

upon a patient suffering from sleeplessness, and the

danger of lethargy and death. Arguments for classi-

fying it as a hot substance were, that it was bitter

tasting and corrosive to the skin, it had a pungent

smell and was darkish yellow in colour, and that it

was observed to produce a sweat. See Sala,

Opiologia, 17–26; Walter Harris, Pharmcologia Anti-

empirica, or, A Rational Discourse of Remedies Both

Chymical and Galenical (London, 1683), 194-196.

On the methods of determining the classification of

drugs see Michael McVaugh, ‘Determining a Drug’s

Properties: Medieval Experimental Protocols’, Bulletin

of the History of Medicine, 2017, 91 (Special Issue:

Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin, eds, Testing Drugs

and Trying Cures), 183–209.90Sala, Opiologia, 14, 34–39.91See nts. 23, 24, 25, 26.92Thomas Willis, Pharmaceutice Rationalis: or, An

Exercitation of the Operations of Medicines in Humane

Bodies, 2 vols (1679), I. 150. Lawrence Principe, in his

research into alchemy and its relationship to early

chemistry, argues that Robert Boyle saw a distinction

between the art of alchemy, which was conducted on

the basis of knowledge of the principles of nature, and

the ‘unphilosophical’ pharmacist, whose products

could not be trusted because they were not based on

sound understanding of the principles behind chymical

processes: Principe, The Aspiring Adept, 30–35.93Bradley, British Housewife, 384–85.

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to laudanum—‘though in a milder degree, all do assent Diacodium to be’.94 Bonet’s

guide suggests that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, a hierarchy of opiate

medicines had developed, with the strongest and most dangerous being reserved for

intractable cases of pain and fever. He directed that drugs should only be given at all

when pain and want of sleep was causing a serious deterioration in the patient, and

only when milder remedies had failed. Diacodium was the safest, and should be tried

first, followed by laudanum only if necessary: ‘For it is not good to ascend to Laudanum,

unless when through the vehemence of Symptoms Diacodiats will not do’.95

Doubts concerning the standards of ready-made laudanums may also be why some

household receipt collections contain their own recipes for preparing it. Alisha Rankin has

found that German gentlewomen undertook laborious tasks in preparing medicines, and

went to some trouble to gain exact instructions on the methods to be used to ensure the

quality and safety of the medicines they created.96 Recipes for laudanum suggest a similar

ambition among lay practitioners in England. These required knowledge and skill

in pharmaceuticals, in the form of the methods of infusing, heating and dissolving

described in Bretnor’s pamphlet. In 1712, Elizabeth Freke’s sister sent her a recipe for lauda-

num she had obtained from Lady Powell, which involved infusing opium with saffron and

sack wine in an earthen pot. The instructions state that it ‘will be a great while’ before the

infusion process is complete.97 A recipe from Mrs Meade’s collection entitled ‘To make

Laudanum van: Helmetts way’ instructs the reader to heat opium, mixed into quince juice,

in a pot near a fire for three weeks before evaporating off the liquid.98 An anonymous

cookery book includes a recipe ‘to make Liquid laudanum’ that involves infusing opium

with saffron, cinnamon and powdered cloves in a glass bottle, and heating it for ‘dayes

upon soe much fire as may keep ye water in a temperate & constant heat’.99

In the records of the Boyle family there are two recipes for laudanum. One of them,

made through a process of fermentation and distillation, contains a number of sensual clues

for the maker to know whether the process is being followed successfully. When the mix-

ture is first heated it ‘will conceive a ferment and exhale a very strong stink’. The mixture is

then left to ferment, which creates ‘plentifull feaces’. At the end of the process of fermenta-

tion, filtering and distillation, ‘it will be a sweet smelling laudanum’.100 Smell was an impor-

tant way of detecting poison in early modern medicine. A major skill in pharmaceuticals

was being able to evaluate a substance by means of smell, sight, taste and touch.101

Robert Boyle took a great interest in the advancement of chymical medicine, and in

laudanum in particular, exchanging letters with physicians concerning the effectiveness

of the drug in treating various illnesses. In 1674, he published a paper for the Royal

Society on methods of preparing laudanum, based on instructions he claimed to have

94Gideon Harvey, A Treatise of Small-pox and Measles

(London, 1696), 154.95Bonet, Guide to the Practical Physician, 752.96Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters, 142–47.97Raymond A. Anselment, ed, The Remembrances of

Elizabeth Freke, 1671-1714 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001), 329–30.

98WL MS 3500 (Mrs Meade), fo. 31r.99Cookery-Book, 17th/18th Century, MS 1795, WL,

fo. 221v.100WL MS 1340 (Boyle Family), fo. 121r.101Nils-Otto Ahnfelt and Hjalmar Fors, ‘Making Early

Modern Medicine: Reproducing Swedish Bitters’,

Ambix, 2016, 63, 162–83, at 172–75.

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been given by the son of Jan Baptiste van Helmont. The method is similar to that con-

tained in the Boyle family receipt book.102 While other lay practitioners had less interest

in the advancement of natural philosophy, their attempts to make laudanum to find relief

from their own ailments were no less ambitious.

Recipes for laudanum in receipt books therefore reflect the experimental nature of lau-

danum at this stage of its development. There was no standardised recipe; rather lauda-

num referred to opium (or, occasionally, henbane) that had been processed using

pharmaceutical methods designed to remove the poisonous element. It is possible that

housewives created their own versions of laudanum to save on costs (as Bretnor advised

physicians to do).103 However, the amount of time and effort involved suggests that this

was part of the culture of trials and testing by which individuals sought to determine for

themselves which medicines were safe and effective. It is to this issue of personal experi-

ence, and its importance in establishing trust in laudanum, that I turn in the next section.

Testing LaudanumUnlike traditional sleep remedies, laudanum had not been tested by centuries of use.

As Bretnor’s treatise and the letter from Talbot examined at the beginning of this article

suggest, chymical medicines were regarded by some as a dangerous novelty. Personal

recommendation was therefore particularly important if laudanum was to become ac-

cepted outside the realm of alchemical experiment. Letters such as the one from Lord

Talbot provide an insight into the kind of anecdotal evidence on which friends and family

relied when trying a new remedy. Such experience appears to have been valued above

the advice of medical practitioners. In his letter Talbot assures Burley that, although the

apothecary advised that no more than three grains of laudanum should be taken at

once, his wife had taken four with no ill effects.104

Elizabeth Freke’s sister, Judith Austen, included in the letter, which contained the rec-

ipe for laudanum, a lengthy description of the various illnesses (suffered by herself,

neighbours and family members) that had been helped by taking the drug, together with

warnings about side-effects and suggested dosage. ‘All these informations I give my

deerest sister,’ she wrote, ‘thatt you may see itt is a safe thinge and nott be affraid of itt

otherwise then to have itt carefully droptt.’ The letter suggests that, by the eighteenth

century, laudanum users were taking far more than the cautious doses recommended in

printed texts and manuscript receipt books, as sufferers from chronic conditions became

addicted. Both Austen and her sister were affected by bouts of colic. Austen describes

how she has been compelled by acute pain to increase the dose in order to regain some

quality of life. She began with twenty drops, but was obliged to enlarge this to twenty

five with frequent use. She advises her sister that, to be effective in severe cases, this

dose must be doubled, although ‘itt sometimes flyes to the head, as perhaps you may

find, and to the frightning of you’. Austen adds that her daughter (also suffering from

102Robert Boyle, ‘An Account of the Two Sorts of the

Helmontian Laudanum’, Philosophical Transactions

of the Royal Society, 1674, 9, 147–49; see corre-

spondence with Dr Richard Lower and Daniel Coxe,

in Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and

Lawrence M. Principe, eds, The Correspondence of

Robert Boyle, 6 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto,

2001), II. 277–82, III. 247–51. Boyle believed that

health was the highest endeavour of chymistry, see

reference at nt. 88.103Sala, Opiologia, sig. [A5(v) – B(r)].104BL Lansdowne MS 57: No. 39 (Talbot letter).

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colic) takes laudanum frequently to help her sleep, and that a neighbour takes thirty

drops twice a day. Lady Powell (the original donor of the recipe) has taken fifty drops

a day for the past several years, having turned to laudanum after other means of relief

failed—‘she had bin dead many years since butt for itt—shee haveing tryed all the

conciderable phisitions in London and by them brought to a skellitton in weakness

and to noe effectt’.105

Austen herself was positive about the safety of laudanum use on a long-term basis.

Others were unconvinced, and remained suspicious of the drug. In an entry in her di-

ary in 1704, Lady Cowper recorded that the Duchess of Buckingham had such trouble

sleeping that she took 150 drops of laudanum each night (a claim probably exagger-

ated by rumour). Cowper seems to see this as a sign of desperation: ‘I need somewhat

to make me sleep’, she adds, ‘... but neither Cares nor Fears have yet reduced me to

such Remedys’.106

ConclusionPlacing laudanum in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century approaches to

dangerous medicines enables us to assess its significance. Traditional advice literature

strongly discouraged ingestion of strong narcotics, except in the very exceptional cir-

cumstances of surgery. The great majority of sleep recipes found in manuscript receipt

books follow this advice. Yet the letters sent to Lord Burghley and Elizabeth Freke ex-

press enthusiasm for a novel medicine involving potentially lethal ingredients designed

to be swallowed, contrary to this advice. There are two possible explanations for this.

One is that the herbal compresses and possets were not very effective in cases of

chronic conditions such as colic. The description of cases in the letter to Elizabeth

Freke suggests this.

Another possibility is that lay practitioners and patients were more concerned

with evidence of the effects of a medicine, than with whether it was Galenic or

Paracelsian. There is a high level of theory underpinning the recipes included in man-

uscript receipt books, but how well this theory was understood by those who col-

lected and used them is not so clear. Whereas for Bretnor, understanding first

principles was essential for preparing laudanum properly, the two letters examined

in this article suggest that, in a lay context, personal recommendations and testing

were more important considerations when assessing whether a particular prepara-

tion was safe for use. Lay people undertook to advise on dosage, based on personal

experience, or that of a close relative or neighbour, sometimes in contradiction to

professional medical advice.

This provides further insight into the importance of the household as a centre for qual-

ity-control and testing. It would be wrong to see ambitious attempts to recreate and test

new medicines in the household as foolhardy. In the context of a medical market in

which medicaments were variable in quality and contents, knowledge of ingredients and

processes from first-hand experience, or that of a trusted friend, were highly valued as a

105Anselment, ed, Remembrances of Elizabeth Freke,

329–30.106Lady Sarah Cowper, Diary, vol. 2, 1703-1705, D/EP

F30, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies,

Perdita Manuscripts, Adam Matthews [amdigital.-

co.uk/primary-sources/Perdita-manusripts-1500-

1700, accessed January 25, 2018], fo. 156r.

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guarantee of safety, as well as of success. However, with evidence of people resorting tohigh dosages of laudanum as rest remained elusive, and concerns about the side-effectsof the drug, this success was ambivalent.

FundingThis research was funded in whole, or in part, by The Wellcome Trust [Grant number109069/Z/15/Z].

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